Standup doesn’t take as much in the neighborhood of guts as it does practice. I still come off the stage shaking like a leaf, even if the audience ate my act up.

If you ever wanted to work your way onto stage, I’d suggest joining an improv troupe. While in the comedy business, improvisers and comics are sort of eternally locked in a playful feud over who’s better, the nice thing about being in an improv troupe is that you can rely on others, so you have a little more of a safety net in the event you fall apart on stage. I’ve always been more comfortable doing improv than I have been at standup. But then, for some folks it’s just the opposite.

If you want REALLY good advice, start your comedy career at open mic nights. Wait till about 2/3 of the way through the evening to take the stage, so the crowd is inebriated enough to laugh at anything but not so inebriated as to heckle you to death. In the comedy business, a crowd with a bar is a very good thing.

I don’t do standup comedy, though. I haven’t worked the balls up to try it yet.

@Jan – The idea I have is to eventually make music worth buying, then give it away on imeem as well has have it easily purchasable through iTunes and Amazon for your MP3 needs.

It’s not easy to steal a song off imeem, actually. They encode the audio to .flv rather than .mp3, which is smart. Then you have to do a bunch of shit, when instead you could pay 99 cents (or less sometimes) for the song in an easy-to-use online retailer. The key is making it easy to listen for free, but annoying to steal, and then easy to buy.

You feel better about buying music from someone who gives it away, too. I do, anyway.

You think that’s self-depreciating? That’s nothing! You’ve never been to one of my standup comedy routines I see. After dragging my fat butt onto the stage, I usually open with the line “I hate fat people”, and hilarity ensues from there.

Believe it or not, I have a very positive self-perception. I’m just REALLY good at faking it

@31 [flings the hard copy version of The Secret at Jim's head]
If you are going to travel down the self-deprecating road here I’m going to stop writing such long posts on this blog to you and remove you from my twitter! @27 “sad eh?” was, and I say was and never again, in the biz, so tell me about it!

@32^ I like the idea of artists getting paid by advertisers rather than the public shelling out money for a whole CD with just one song they like. BUT if the public likes what you do they can go over to your web site and buy direct from you. This eliminates the hefty profits to the middleman who has little or no talent. This is definitely a positive change for the consumer and a whole new take on the industry! I’m all for it!

You upload to SnoCap, then upload to imeem, SnoCap recognizes the file on imeem and attributes your rights to it, then you get paid based on # of streams.

For an example of what you can do with it, check out the music page on my site, http://petercoffin.com/store/music.htm

You just summed up my life story

I’m writing a new novel. The working title so far is “my next response to Jan”

Any early orders? I’ll autograph the cover.